Little Women: Saving a Wretch Like Me
by UndomesticatedSoA
Summary: Who's gonna save me when even I'm not sure I'm worth saving?


**A/N**

**UndomesticatedSoA - Definition: A collaboration between Voracious Bitch and MuckyShroom, exploring the women of SAMCRO. Some characters are canon, some OFCs. Some situations are AU, some canon. If you want more info, just check out the bio.**

**Disclaimer: All characters, etc from Sons of Anarchy are the property of Kurt Sutter, FX, etc. We own nothing that you recognise from SoA.**

**Parental Advisory Warning: This piece contains strong language and references to drug use.  
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**-o0o-**

**Saving a Wretch Like Me**

Itchy, itchy, crawling, itchy. An army of ants is marching over my skin. Icy spiders tickle my eyes through the hot tears. All the hair on my body stands on end. I tremble as the sobs burst from my lungs and wrack through my pitiful carcass. I hate her. I fucking hate that bitch for doing this to me. I fucking hate myself for being here, being this miserable, trembling piece of shit. I'll never get past this. I know that know. I'll never survive. I'll never be strong enough. I can't stop my hand from reaching forward...

-o0o-

I'm floating, it's the weirdest feeling. It's like in those dreams you have where you're flying, but scarier because I can't make myself land and I can't make myself wake up. The fear and the shame are crushing. I'm amazed that those two feelings haven't grounded me so hard that I'm planted six feet into the ground. They can't bring me down, but they're probably the only things keeping me from floating away, like a leaf on the breeze.

I'm looking down at myself, my almost seven month pregnant self. My physical body is passed out cold. The blood leaking out of me, out of my womb, is mixing with the Ben and Jerry's that's melting all over the kitchen floor. The red and the white, it's poetic in a sick sorta way. I loathe myself, but that feeling is so old now it doesn't hurt me anymore. Instead of the sharp pain in my heart and my stomach that it used to be, it's just a dull ache. It doesn't make me cry anymore, but it does have me reaching for the spoon and the needle, has me searching for a vein; even with that little boy growing inside me, depending on me to keep him healthy when he's so vulnerable.

Even with all this hatred, shame and fear in me, the bitch addict; the part of me that can ignore the fact I've got a life inside of me while I'm looking for a vein, the part of me that sunk the needle into the skin next to my wedding ring regardless, that part of me is angry, very, very angry. I'm messing with her high. I was weak and passed out, and now her high is gone and she isn't going to get it again until I come round and cook another dose.

This wasn't how it was meant to be. I know everyone says that, it's all about denial, but really, this isn't how I was supposed to end up. Well maybe it was, but not after I met Jax, my future was supposed to have been rubbed out and re-written the day I said "I do."

My life had been a mess up 'til then. I'd been into all sorts since forever. I've no idea who my daddy is, let alone if he even gives a shit about me. Could be dead for all I know. It'd always just been me and Martha. God forbid I should ever call her "Mom". She never wanted anyone to know she had a kid. She'd had me young, about sixteen, liked to pretend we were sisters, not mother and daughter.

She had the worst taste in men too. If there was a scumbag within a two-block radius she'd find him and shack up with him. It was the fourth one I remember that introduced me to weed. Thought it was funny to watch a nine year old get stoned. Funny for him maybe. He didn't last long though. It was number five who introduced me to...well...everything else. I used to steal whatever he left lying around. Anything. Powder, pills, whatever. I'd take anything, just trying to get out of being me. He lasted quite a while. Fuck knows what 'Martha' saw in that waste of skin and oxygen.

I'd discovered crank when I met Jax. I was flying out of my tree when I bumped into him at the gas station, like, literally walked straight into him. I was so high I didn't hardy know my own name, but he didn't notice. I'd been so many different kinds of buzzed for so long even I couldn't tell the difference between straight me and high me, unless I started shaking or some shit like that.

It was kinda sweet really, our little MTV love story, the secret junkie and the outlaw biker. At first all I was thinking about was those blue eyes and that smile and that body. Wow, that body could bring a nun to her knees. It's always the same though ain't it? Damn female weakness, believing we're The One, the one to cure them, the one to make them whole, the one they need. Jackson Teller had a bad case of broken heart thanks to his high-school sweetheart Tara Knowles, and I was delusional enough to think that I was The One that could make him all better.

Guess it's not just a female thing though. One day he caught me shooting up, hiding in that skanky pit they call a toilet at the club house. He was so surprised, the blind idiot. He hadn't realised I'd been tapping my veins the entire time we'd been together. I'd gotten sneaky about where I put the needle, aiming for my feet more than my elbows and shit, but there was still plenty of bruising, plenty of track marks littering my skin. Christ only knows what crock he fed himself to explain all that away. Probably the same shit that I was feeding myself. He started believing that he was The One to change me, to get me clean, to save me.

I got clean for him; and I fucking hate getting clean. The bitch addict in me fucking hates it too. She screams the entire time. She cries and yells inside my head until I'm screaming and yelling from the noise and pain she creates whilst my body's shivering and vomiting.

The fucking shame of it is that it seemed he liked me better when I was high. Once I got out of rehab it was like we didn't know what to say to each other. I couldn't drink without getting the urge to get high. Alcohol eats at my self control like acid. That's unfortunate when you hang around with guys like the Sons. The only thing they drink more of than booze is coffee, and that's only 'til someone puts another bottle or another shot glass in their hands. I tried, really I did. I know you're thinking that I'm weak, a useless piece of pussy, but I really did try. Couldn't hold out forever though. Those fucking Friday night parties. One beer wouldn't hurt? Well, turns out one beer can hurt a lot. Took me the grand total of two weeks to be back to where I was before rehab. Took five weeks on top of that to discover I was pregnant.

Gemma packed me off for another stint in rehab when that came out. Christ but she was like nuclear radioactive angry when she found out I'd gone back to the crank, especially when she found out I was pregnant. That woman is some scary shit when she's mad. It was bad enough when she found out her precious baby boy was fucking a junkie the first time round, but this was a whole new epic level of mad. Funnily enough, Jax proposing when I got out of rehab the second time actually shut the bitch up. I think she might actually have been speechless.

That was the best time. I was straight and Jax was so happy about the baby. Happier than I ever thought he would be. It was a quick wedding in Reno, nothing fancy, but it was more than I ever thought someone like me'd ever get. I really felt like he loved me, like someone finally wanted me around, for a good reason. Didn't last though. Perfect never fucking does. He'd been away for a couple of days with the club and when they got back I walked in on some of the guys giving him shit about some pussy he'd been banging on the road. Made me feel...well...it didn't make me feel wanted, didn't make me feel good. I went back to the one thing that did make me feel good. Crank always makes me feel good, when it's not making me want to curl up in a ball and die of shame and self-loathing anyway.

So now here we are. I can hear someone knocking at the door. The floating me can see Gemma peering in at the window. I know she'll be disgusted by this, by me, by the state of the house that I couldn't be bothered to clean, by the rubbish outside that I just couldn't be bothered to pick up. She'll loathe me even more for what I've done to myself, not because she's worried about me, but because of what it means for her grandson inside me. She hates me with a passion already, but she'll never forgive me for this.

The bitch addict is only concerned for herself. Gemma means hospital. Hospital means no drugs. It means withdrawal, pain, sickness, shaking. All this means detox again, no drugs and a roomful of holier-than-thou twelve steppers searching for something else to latch onto, something to replace the high.

Normally I'd be trembling in fear at the hate Gemma'll spew at me, at the poisonous, traitorous screaming that the bitch addict will be doing in my head; but right now I'm just thanking God that someone's found me, someone's going to save my baby, my Abel.

-o0o—

It's like my hand is magnetised. No matter how much I want to stop it reaching for the needle full of crank in the Bible that bitch gave me, it moves relentlessly forward. I'm split in half. Part of me is screaming for this to stop, for me to throw the good book and its evil contents across the room; but the bitch addict is winning, and the whore knows it. She's squatting in my head with a satisfied smirk on her face as my fingers wrap around the plastic cylinder.

I got my wish. They've saved my baby, my little boy, my Abel. He's safe. He's still got a lot to contend with, but at least he doesn't have to contend with me anymore. At least I'm not dragging him down into hell. My body feels strangely empty now that he's gone. I can't feel him kicking, moving. I can't feel those little sharp jabs under my ribs, can't see the little elbows and knees moving across my stomach like my body's possessed. I don't feel that heaviness inside of me. For that brief time I was so sure I could do this, so sure I could be the momma he deserved; but Gemma's right. I fucking hate it when she's right. I hate it worse when I have to admit it. I don't deserve Abel, I don't deserve to be his momma. I don't deserve to be part of his innocent life. I've done enough damage already. I don't deserve anything.

Itchy, itchy, crawling, itchy. There's only one way to make that scratchy, rabid feeling go away. The fluorescent lights glint off the steel needle as it slips into my skin.


End file.
